Question

I’m looking for an API on windows that enables to to create and kill threads at will. Also having ability to bind threads to cores. I was introduced to Win32 Threading API here.
However when I checked MSDN I see _beginthreadex(), and _endthreadex(). So I’m guessing there should be a call to _endthreadex everytime I create a thread?
To get answers to such questions I’m looking for a tutorial on Windows Threading. Can anyone help with this?

P.S. This may be off topic, but does Boost support thread affinity too? If so, can someone point me to a tutorial/documentation related to thread affinity?

Answer 1

Having thread created (such as with _beginthreadex) you need to let the thread exit gracefully as you never know if it is in the middle of something just now (having a lock on a certain resource – for instance). Still you have an option to blow it away with TerminateThread API any time.

SetThreadAffinityMask and friends let you locate your threads at the CPU battlefield. You might end up leaving OS scheduler to choose cores to run your threads on though, as chances are high that it is going to be more efficient.

Update on reusing threads: Creating a thread you are passing your thread proc to start, and as soon as you return from it, the thread is about to be terminated. That is, starting another worker thread activity is possible in two ways: either create a new thread from the start, or do not exit from thread proc and synchronize to catch up a new worker activity request. The latter might be implemented using IPC objects, e.g. events:

int ThreadProc()
{
  while(true)
  {
    wait for new event;
    if(termination requested) break;
    otherwise, on worker activity request, do next requested task;
  }
}

Refer to Thread Synchronization for Beginners for sample code and description.